Taming the Tiger or Slaying the Bear......loki100 (Axis) vs Speedy (SU)

[Speedysteve]

Hi All,

Loki and I will be starting a 41 Campaign shortly. It will be a joint AAR and we'll start posting after we've gotten the first few weeks underway for OpSec.

I haven't played the SU in Wite2 yet but played them quite a bit in Wite1....in many ways the first few weeks of war may be just like real life with me fumbling around as to what's best to do[;)] Hopefully I won't 'do a Stalin', though, and lock myself away for a few days with a stash of Vodka for company.

All - feel free to comment and post thoughts as we go throughout. I'm frantically reading the relevant parts of the manual and looking through a few AAR's/War Room posts.....late night reading tonight!

[HardLuckYetAgain]

I have not seen Loki play Germans in forever.

[Speedysteve]

Yes. It's part of the reason for Loki playing them - we decided with me not playing much Wite2 for ages it would potentially 'balance' things out a bit.

Well. I've spent the last 2.5 hours making notes, strategising, planning in prep for the War of all Wars....My eyes are square now [;)]

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

I have not seen Loki play Germans in forever.

there are quite a few AARs with me as the axis buried very deep in the beta forum, one (HtH) we got to late 1942 despite a few instances of tracking back to test out new patches etc

I offered to take the axis partly as I fancied a change (I do think that more than in #1 its best if you play both sides - WiTW is similar) and it put us both into a slightly unfamiliar position

[Speedysteve]

Oh man.....what have.....YOU.....done here Loki?

I've just got off the phone from Joe. Now I will confess he was slurring a lot but I did catch the following words and sentences: "Betrayal....how dare he?"...."That's it. No more of his favourite hammer and sickle birthday cards......Christmas is cancelled".....

I have been tasked to offer you the chance to withdraw. If you do we'll share plans with you of our super tank the T-34.....if you don't.....well I've lined up a few 100 biplanes here and they will be unleashed!

[Floxolydian]

Damn haha

haven't seen this many T1 VVS losses so far [:D]

Although.. Luftwaffe losses also seem quite high! 10:1 K/D in planes but only 4:1 in pilots.

Very aggressive play style. That's what we wanna see!

[loki100]

T1

Since this is a shared thread, clearly there will no discussion of certain long term choices (such as where I plan to set up the final defence of Berlin), but we'll be about 4 turns behind the action, so I'll mostly write it as a normal AAR but maybe with a bit of a focus on why I'm making some choices.

The game has been out for a wee while and its fairly clear that there is much less scope for perfect moves than in #1 simply due to the greater number of trade offs.

Speedysteve has discussed the set up rules. One we've gone with is TB locked. I realise the lure of maximum agency but I think that option brings a lot of problems. If the axis player is only thinking of win in 15 turns or end the game, then its not going to work as designed, its meant to set up long term problems if you try for short term benefits. The other reason to leave alone is if you cancel a unit transfer it cancels all the transfers for that unit – and some seem to spend a lot of time moving from Theatre to Theatre. That means later on you can be critically short in a given theatre and not really aware of why. So it introduces a lot of double checking for not much gain.

While I'm musing, a general view on playing WiTE2. Many will prefer one side or the other but the two sides are much more different than in #1. Its a bit like with WiTW, it really is worth playing the 'other' side to gain a better insight into their strengths and weaknesses.

So … time to report on the game.

My air strategy was two fold. I actually didn't want to put too much effort into D1 airbase bombing, but wanted to weaken the VVS with a first hit. So I set up 5 GA-airfield blocks, one up into Latvia, one north of the Bialystok pocket (no … its a salient … at the moment), one to the south, one around Lvov-Rovno and one Odessa and Moldavia.

For the latter I assigned the relevant air groups (as I didn't want those Ju-88s later on flying up to the opening battles of AGS and taking high operational losses, the rest were auto assign.

So thats the outcome – not bad, not great. My losses were concentrated in occasional instances where a flight of bombers were caught unescorted.

Note I only killed 450 pilots (so 2 weeks of their trained pilot production).



I wasn't sure if I was going to bypass Riga or take it, so wanted enough interdiction there, and off Ventspils, to cut Soviet supply. Note the interdiction line – that comes because naval interdiction missions drop interdiction behind themselves en-route to their target (recon missions have a similar effect). This can be incredibly useful as a tool to isolate sectors – you could even set a different route out and back. I committed the Baltic naval air group and a Ju-88 AOG (with the mine loudout).



As mentioned, most of my losses came off individual encounters



Now I've weakened the VVS a little with the bombing but my goal was to do real damage around GS interaction. As the axis player you actually don't need GS on T1, you'll win most battles so its not much of a force multiplier. But what it is is bait, again I took out some decent stuff but also over 4 weeks of Soviet pilot production. That is going to make the Soviets reliant on placing low experience units in the reserve for 4-6 weeks till their pilots train up – effectively limiting the VVS for some time.

I should have turned off GS for the last battle, that saw Ju-88s unescorted and close enough to fresh Soviet fighters – without that the pay off would have been much better.



On the ground, nothing particularly creative. I'm out of practice and mostly went for safety first in pocket design. As ever with AGN, plagued by indecision over Riga, in the end took it as the potential as a port depot is too much and no point shedding VP I can avoid.

Overall fairly pleased, almost all the rail from Kaunas to Daugavipils captured so a lot is intact. I've put the majority of the rail repair SU into 18A so that will help fill in the gaps in Latvia and Lithuania.

As you can see LVII Pzr is on this sector – next turn it can either help towards Pskov or swing east along the Dauga/Dvina.



So AGC. As mentioned, I've been cautious, no moves past Minsk towards the Berezina, I'd rather optimise the pocket and protection of movement corridors.

Note I haven't attacked the western edge of the main pocket – you can run up some nasty losses here and I'd rather wait for a turn of isolation to work in my favour.

Reviewing that image, I've not done a great job in protecting the Brest-Minsk rail – the loss of admin moves for the repairs could cost me a turn to Minsk, that is already set up and repairing.



AGS, another location of constant indecision as to what to do. In the end I took Lvov (& cleared the rail line) just with infantry so decided to push the Pzrs at Rovno. That has a few advantages, it sidesteps some rough terrain and opens up a drive south or east next turn, while clearly most of the Soviet units will fall back, I can set up a running battle.

Unless the Soviet side seriously reinforce, their formations in the Ukraine are going to be strong for about 4-5 turns, at that stage they weaken rapidly.

One thing worth bearing in mind. Low TOE formations that are isolated will often collapse in the logistics phase or when you move next to them. So you can save yourself a lot of CPP by moving around the FZ lines and simply mop up what is left next turn.



Losses. In general, I'm happy if my mine are under 10k on T1. Mostly reflects a cautious approach to how I organised the turn.



Only 7 held results (3 converted to scouted).

Note that one contributed almost 12% of my total losses, in the main even wins vs SW Front are costly, if you fail it can be really brutal.



So the big question is whether the northern pockets are going to be broken?

Going forward, the LW is going to be fairly useless for the next couple of turns. I'll have to rest some units due to losses and I can't bring up the fighters on most sectors – equally don't want to have to risk unescorted bombers. So I don't see any reason not to push it on T1 as long as the loss ratio works in your favour.

I've done a fairly bland opening which has the advantage that I can see what the response is, especially as I have a couple of Pzr Corps in the positions where they react in very different ways.

I've just got T4 back, so as we're managing a complete turn every 2-3 days, should be a regular flow of posts from now on.

[Speedysteve]

Hi All,

So....now that Marshal Speedyevsky has adapted to the shock of being attacked by 'his friends' I decided it was time to tell the world the reality of how the war has gone to date.

Firstly, a frank confession (safe for me to write as Comrade Stalin can't read English). Certain members of the Party have left the Soviet Military in a rather 'unfavourable' position to conduct War. These early weeks are taking a lot of my time, stress, vodka and lack of sleep to iron out what I class as some of the basics. To that end during the first week (and many of these are still a work in progress) I undertook these acts as a priority (fortunately with Comrade Stalin 'unavailable' I've had free reign to do as I see fit):

1.) VVS - Our Airforce was brutally attacked by the Axis invaders. It will take time to recover from this. As such all low morale groups and those with low aircraft numbers were withdrawn to the safety of the east for R&R. This will take time to retrain my men and upgrade my planes. We will fight where we can though.

2.) Command structure - it's a mess let's be honest. In the coming weeks this will be ironed out to the correct Army/Front structure. Comrades have assured me we will remove the Corps HQ's in the coming weeks.

3.) All SU's were withdrawn to Stavka (hint to new players - if you break a pocket to restore supply immediately remove any SU's in attached units back to Stavka to save them) to organise what we have before I send to the front again.

4.) Depots - disbanded those in threat - I sent many a Christmas card to Herr Loki....I'm not giving him free supplies either.

5.) Begun to disband those Static forts that aren't needed to save men and material.

A few other secret things in case the Abwehr is watching.....

-------------------

I've ordered all Comrades to fight! We will prevail against these devils. I was wary of the so called Luftwaffe though as reports from my Officers say they flew far superior machines and that there pilots were even better than ours.

None the less in the North I did conduct some Naval Patrols to interdict any Axis ships off Riga, bombed Riga Railyard at night (just this first turn as I feel it's too overpowered right now) and sent 100's of bombers against suspected Nazi Panzer positions near Rezikne....reports indicate they didn't achieve much but a local farmer did complain that 127 of his Cows were killed[8|] I sent a friend to have a word. Neither him nor his Cows need be concerned about this anymore.

[Speedysteve]

On the ground I ordered my men to rescue their Comrades where they could. In the North they heroically did re-establish contact with our forces in Lithuania and cut off the fiendish advance Axis forces in AGN:

[Speedysteve]

So close in the Center but not enough vodka was distributed to my men....measures have been taken

Nothing of note to report in the South apart from re-organising and adapting

[loki100]

T2

Brief reflection on what the Soviet player can do. I think the 2 key bits are to grab opportunities and generally make the Axis player have to respond and also careful unit placement.

Well I got back a turn that was both 'annoying' and had lots of units just placed to cost me MP/CPP or to forego the obvious move.

So in the light of this, have decided that each report should start with a 'bad things the Soviets did' section so they are all properly recorded.

So, that was closer to having the Bialystok pocket opened than I feel comfortable with.

The only good news is I didn't lose any rail hexes so Minsk will be hooked to the rail net (south and west) by T3



After all the effort that went into taking Riga it is reduced to rubble



And the VVS really partied just out of reach (well, in truth, well out of reach) of my fighters.



And this just adds to the fun ...



So setting aside feelings of despair and panic, first positive image is the northern rail network. You can see where my FBDs are (outlined in yellow), I have most of the support rail repair units in 18A and should recreate a decent network fairly soon.



AGN, I'm taking my time reducing the Courland with just a couple of infantry divisions, Sealed off the pockets and mostly let the mobile formations rest.

Riga got a lot of air supply and has a fighter group, so hopefully better protected.



AGC, I'm mostly screening the Pripyet region so the focus is towards Smolensk. Given the mess that was made of my lines of communications, reasonably pleased to almost reach the Dnepr. A fair number of mobile units had a lot of spare MP/SMP but won't gain much CPP as they are almost all in hexes I took this turn – but note the units of 9A are deployed in friendly held hexes.

Also worth noting, especially at this stage I always play with the road overlay on – its as important to see as the rail lines.

Minsk is protected as at Riga, plus a HQ with a fair bit of flak.



Bulk of AGS – my interest here is to get SW Front off balance, the pocket south of Rovno isn't designed to hold, but being isolated for one turn should disband the various FZ and possibly anything that is already weakened. In the end its combat and pressure that is key here rather than reaching for encirclements (nice though they are – but a Soviet player should be able to keep mostly out of reach).

Harder to keep the infantry in controlled hexes here but mostly managed it with 6A.

I've deployed some recon bi-planes to trigger the process of fitting out the airfields.



Nothing unusual here, didn't use 11A for combat till its needed, sorted out the OOB to put the Rumanian formations into their 3 and 4 armies but kept 11A under the Romanian army group command.



Losses – not much to say, even with the disaster of that security regiment, mine are light – deliberately so as gaining replacements up around Smolensk etc is increasingly difficult.



OOB – also not really much to say at this stage. I will put another army on assault status, probably 17A as there is a need to move a lot in the Ukraine and that will help with CPP regain.



Almost no air action that turn. Ran some short range recon just to fix roughly where the Soviets were (so used the interdiction mission), turned off GS. Nature of the fighting is that you don't really need it in the pockets while the front lines are too deep for reliable escort commitment.

I'd rather have the LW fresh and ready from about T4 than use it on marginal missions.

[Nix77]

Wouldn't it be best to give assault status for the armies with best commanders? 17A is filled with mediocre generals, with von Stuelpnagel being a prime candidate for an army commander to be changed.

I've been thinking it would make sense to keep the assault armies close to max capacity, adding infantry corps to PzGs and filling infantry armies with 4 corps, 4 divisions each.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Nix77

Wouldn't it be best to give assault status for the armies with best commanders? 17A is filled with mediocre generals, with von Stuelpnagel being a prime candidate for an army commander to be changed.

I've been thinking it would make sense to keep the assault armies close to max capacity, adding infantry corps to PzGs and filling infantry armies with 4 corps, 4 divisions each.

I'm not too fussed to be honest, the corps with the better commanders are often linked to a Pzr Grp at this stage, so its more a device to speed recovery from the border battles

I try not to change too many commanders early on, tend to find its T6-8 before the Germans really get into sustained fighting where the leadership aspects pay off so I tend to spend most of my AP and depots and priority repairs and try to slowly create a reserve, I'll then work my way around the commmand chain using this up.

taking my time over this means I can then optimise the formations that ended up on the critical sector, I usually have a rough path for each corps in mind but the vagaries of the opening pockets and how to reduce them can lead to some significant diversions.

[loki100]

T3 – 6 July 1941


So we can start with the usual review of the 'bad things done by the Soviets'

Pretty bad ... among that lot are 2 Rumanian tank regiments routed and a Pzr regiment pushed back



No railyard bombing this turn, this shows all the >2 size I have taken and it will be a little while before they are properly contributing.



At the moment, none are really functioning as depots – Riga as the Soviets managed to isolate it.

Its worth noting that a depot will start to function well about 3-5 turns after you capture it, so you will tend to be taking most of your supply from the sector behind those closest to the front. This is one reason not to be too quick to disband depots that are now some distance back.



Also I had 3 units isolated – not a surprise as I put some into exposed positions for the benefits of a short term isolation of a group of hexes in the Soviet turn.



AGN, I'm a bit slow here but the pockets are now cleared and Daugavipils will be connected to the rail net next turn. Predictable build up at Pskov, depending on their response I'm well placed to hook around to the east. Letting some of 18A rest and recover, 16A starting to arrive – which is why I've been incautious about my flanks.

Had a long dither over what to do with LVII Mot Corps. It had mostly rested last turn so had a lot of MP. One option was to push it east along the Dvina (there is a moving pocket of Soviet units south of the river) but decided to try out an early lunge for Velikie-Luki.

I'm not sure where this leads but if my opponent misses the threat, I can get across that rough terrain unopposed – this cuts the Moscow-Leningrad dual track rail (which in turn causes real supply problems for a large Soviet force at Leningrad) and maybe brings places like Rzhev and Kalinin into play early. Most likely, they can move back south and a more conventional drive on Moscow.



I'm not fighting if I can help it but worth disrupting a Soviet defence of the Dnepr if I can. Note elements of 9A in the sector (and with 85+ CPP) I have the equivalent of a Pzr Corp held back and Minsk is connected to the west with a FBD/HQ set up – so will be fully functioning on T5. The FBD from Brest-Litovsk is 2 hexes south so will then move on up to Smolensk.

Have brought in some fighters and stukas, leaving the LB out of the way for now.

For the moment, not much pressure towards Gomel, happy to leave this to some infantry formations.



AGS – this is even more of an experiment than messing around with LVII Pzr. Basically committing 1 PG in a narrow salient directly towards Kiev. No idea how this will play out as clearly at some stage I need to go south-east, but last turns lunge produced a rapid retreat by SW Front from Tarnopol.

Resealed the pocket around Dubno (so far the Soviets are being very annoying at opening these – but 2 turns of isolation in their supply phase means they will shatter or rout with catastrophic losses regardless next turn).

I ran a repair up to Brody as that is a good location for LB once I can risk moving them up – but the main repair line is going via Tarnopol etc.



As you can see, actual fighting is not really something I am interested in – in fact the Soviets did as many attacks as I did. Idea is to deliver 11A to Odessa with its CPP as intact as I can manage.



Ground losses, my worst week so far, not much left of the border pockets so that is the last of the relatively easy Soviet losses.



Air losses, the VVS refused to play this turn, I ran a bit more recon as I wanted to know roughly where they were and a small amount of GA-unit on particular targets. Not doing much GS as not really needed yet.



OOB, not much for the big numbers yet. Have put 17A on assault – not really for command capacity but more its a useful way to regain CPP in a period of relatively rapid movement.

Almost every motorised unit has its own AA and have slotted heavier AA assets into the more advanced corps.



About 50% of the heavy artillery is now in the corps of 11A given their likely role. The rest is in OKH, if I decide that Leningrad is feasible this will go to 18A, if not then I'll spread it out but mostly within AGC.



Too early for much of a discussion re VP. Pragmatically, I'd write off time bonus for Pskov and Smolensk – a Soviet player will deny you pretty much all of them if they are prepared to lose the formations in the longer term.

Of the T10-T15 set, Kiev is a given, Orel likely (depends a bit on what I do with 2 PG post-Smolensk), Talinin usually is an easy take. I'm not sure about Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye, usually they are fairly safe but I have 1 PG relatively far north.

We are both shedding a few VP due to Theatre shortages, that'll stop fairly soon. The only one I will send extra formations to is the Soviet garrison box – and that less for VP and more to keep the partisans as a low grade problem. There are a few Hungarian units best placed there as they are of little on-map value.

[Speedysteve]

Week 2 of the Great Patriotic War......

In addition to what Herr Loki has posted....my Comrades did successfully bomb Riga at night with laser guided missiles. You can see here up north the current state of play by the end of the week. Comrades did launch an unsuccessful counter-attack against elements of the 3rd Motorised Division. An initial defence is established by Pskov.....

[Speedysteve]

On the Western Front we motivated our Comrades to amass a defensive line along the Dnepr urging our men forward to repel the heinous invaders! You'll also notice that we've established our Fort City at the key junction of Smolensk.... in addition I had a long conversation with Comrade Stalin through the night and one of our conclusions was that we needed Marshal Zhukov at the Front....as such we've placed Boris (Shaposhnikov) in place at STAVKA instead.

[Speedysteve]

....For posterty's sake here's the location of our Glorious Victories against the Rumanian Armoured Rgt's.....

[Speedysteve]

Northern Front:

Kuznetsov phoned me early on the morning of the 4th July to inform me the Nazi's had crossed the Sorot and his locally ordered counter-attack had failed....I had consumed my breakfast Vodka but after analysing the situation I decided to withdraw my forces from the Pskov line for fear of encirclement.... No air attacks had been launched as I'm still in the process of re-organising the VVS...I'll post some extra thoughts on that in the coming days.

I show you my Readers our position after the week's moves.

[Speedysteve]

Western Front:

The Axis have breached the Dnepr! Defences by the 18th and 38th Tank Division's failed miserably (Comrades have been sent to remove leadership). With the threat of a potential encirclement north or south of the enemy bridgehead I once more ordered my next to move to the next defensive positions further east.

Comrades can also see some reinforcements arriving to the NE of the Theater

[Speedysteve]

In the South the only real highlight for the Soviets was cutting off the Axis Armoured spearheads and forcing some enemy Panzers to retreat....AS you can see here I ordered the VVS to assist where it could....Comrades did well and extra Vodka was issued. Huzzah!